GRACE MARGARET GALLAHER

Betty stood at her door, gazing drearily down the
long, empty corridor in which the breakfast gong echoed
mournfully. All the usual brisk scenes of that
hour, groups of girls in Peter Thomson suits or starched
shirt-waists, or a pair of energetic ones, red-cheeked
and shining-eyed from a run in the snow, had vanished
as by the hand of some evil magician. Silent
and lonely was the corridor.

“And it’s the day before Christmas!”
groaned Betty. Two chill little tears hung on
her eyelashes.

The night before, in the excitement of getting the
girls off with all their trunks and packages intact,
she had not realized the homesickness of the deserted
school. Now it seemed to pierce her very bones.

“Oh, dear, why did father have to lose his money?
’Twas easy enough last September to decide I
wouldn’t take the expensive journey home these
holidays, and for all of us to promise we wouldn’t
give each other as much as a Christmas card.
But now!” The two chill tears slipped over the
edge of her eyelashes. “Well, I know how
I’ll spend this whole day; I’ll come right
up here after breakfast and cry and cry and cry!”
Somewhat fortified by this cheering resolve, Betty
went to breakfast.

Whatever the material joys of that meal might be,
it certainly was not “a feast of reason and
a flow of soul.” Betty, whose sense of humour
never perished, even in such a frost, looked round
the table at the eight grim-faced girls doomed to
a Christmas in school, and quoted mischievously to
herself: “On with the dance, let joy be
unconfined.”

Breakfast bolted, she lagged back to her room, stopping
to stare out of the corridor windows.

She saw nothing of the snowy landscape, however.
Instead, a picture, the gayest medley of many colours
and figures, danced before her eyes: Christmas-trees
thumping in through the door, mysterious bundles scurried
into dark corners, little brothers and sisters flying
about with festoons of mistletoe, scarlet ribbon and
holly, everywhere sound and laughter and excitement.
The motto of Betty’s family was: “Never
do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow”;
therefore the preparations of a fortnight were always
crowded into a day.

The year before, Betty had rushed till her nerves
were taut and her temper snapped, had shaken the twins,
raged at the housemaid, and had gone to bed at midnight
weeping with weariness. But in memory only the
joy of the day remained.

“I think I could endure this jail of a school,
and not getting one single present, but it breaks
my heart not to give one least little thing to any
one! Why, who ever heard of such a Christmas!”

“Won’t you hunt for that blue—­”

“Broken my thread again!”

“Give me those scissors!”

Betty jumped out of her day-dream. She had wandered
into “Cork” and the three O’Neills
surrounded her, staring.